Accessible Clean Energyhttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com
Identifying cheap energy for the futureTue, 14 Nov 2017 12:32:40 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngAccessible Clean Energyhttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com
Renewables are now unstoppable – FThttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/renewables-are-now-unstoppable-ft/
Fri, 26 May 2017 09:31:19 +0000http://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/?p=1729Read More ›]]>We note with relish the latest Big Read from the Financial Times, entitled The Big Green Bang: How Renewables Became Unstoppable. It’s a pleasure to read, in a paper that routinely covers energy to include just fossil fuels and until now has farmed out coverage of renewables to the environment correspondent, that renewables have progressed so far and so fast in terms of cost that there is now no going back. A fantastic read.

Global renewable power generation capacity rose by 9 per cent last year — a fourfold increase from the start of this century — buoyed by the growth of newer sources such as solar power that shot up by more than 30 per cent. For the second year in a row, renewable energy accounted for more than half the new power generation capacity added worldwide. Sales of plug-in electric vehicles last year were 42 per cent higher than in 2015, growing eight times faster than the overall market. The storage capacity of big lithium ion battery systems more than doubled last year.

These advances have become too significant for the oil and gas industry to ignore. In the first three months of this year, the heads of some of the world’s largest oil companies have spoken of a “global transformation” (Saudi Aramco) that is “unstoppable” (Royal Dutch Shell) and “reshaping the energy industry” (Statoil). Isabelle Kocher, chief executive of French power and gas group Engie, calls it a new “industrial revolution” that will “bring about a profound change in the way we behave”.

Filed under: Uncategorized]]>accessiblecleanenergyOfficial from the IEA: Renewables have overtaken coal as world’s biggest power sourcehttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/official-from-the-iea-renewables-have-overtaken-coal-as-worlds-biggest-power-source/
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 08:43:52 +0000http://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/?p=1702Read More ›]]>Renewables have hit many milestones over the last few years – record installation levels, record investment, more new renewable capacity installed last year than all fossil fuels combined. But this one’s a big one: the latest issue of the International Energy Agency’s renewable market report has confirmed that there is now more renewable generating capacity installed worldwide than any other form of generation, surpassing the previous top dog, coal.

The figures are astonishing – last year, half a million solar panels were installed every day. In China, two wind turbines were installed every hour. As a result of the increased pace of installation, the IEA has sharply increased its projections of how much renewable generating capacity will be installed in the next 5 years by 13%. By 2021, the amount of generating capacity from renewables will be equivalent to the total generating capacity of all energy of the USA and the EU combined today.

Filed under: Economic Indicators, Policy, Uncategorized]]>accessiblecleanenergyScreen Shot 2016-02-11 at 16.28.22Green finance in Luxembourghttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/green-finance-in-luxembourg/
Sat, 01 Oct 2016 09:25:21 +0000http://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/?p=1671Read More ›]]>Regular readers will already be aware that the VAM – Accessible Green Energy Fund is located in Luxembourg. Apart from being a financial centre, particularly adept at fund management and hosting, Luxembourg listed the first Green Bond in 2007 in conjunction with the EIB and has recently taken a few more steps to beef up its green credentials.

Second, and more relevant to us, LuxFLAG – the independent non-profit fund labelling organisation – has launched a new “Climate Finance” label, to sit alongside their existing ESG, Environment and Microfinance labels. This is an unprecedented step to create a label of this kind for this asset class in Luxembourg and we wholeheartedly welcome the new label. It our opinion it adds detail and granularity to LuxFLAG’s existing offerings, which can only help investors as they decide how best to use their assets not only to help solve but also to participate in the growth story of our time.

We at Accessible Clean Energy are pleased to announce that our fund is among the very first to be reviewed by LuxFLAG to receive the Climate Finance label and we anticipate the first decision by the end of the year. Watch this space!

ESI Africa Power magazine reported that the airline used 6,300 litres of bio jet fuel for the one-way trip to Cape Town from Johannesburg and aims to fly 50% of its airliners with biofuels by 2022, Acting CEO Musa Zwane said.

South Africa has seen strong growth in renewables, largely as a result of its successful Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP). The initiative launched in 2011 and targets 13GW of clean energy. By April last year, four rounds of the auction programme had been completed with 6,331MW awarded to developers. The government announced in February this year that the fifth round will comprise 1.6GW of projects.

The biofuel was produced in South Africa by Sunchem SA in partnership with Boeing, SkyNRG, and South African Airways. The consortium has been building up a domestic supply chain for the fuel over the last two and a half years as part of Project Solaris.

Biofuel produced from tobacco is particularly interesting as tobacco, traditionally a reliable cash crop in many countries, has come under pressure from socially responsible and ethical investors. New applications for the crop could mean a whole new market for squeezed producers, not just in South Africa but around the world. The success of Project Solaris bodes well for the future.

In a speech last week, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, emphasised yet again: climate change is an economic problem.

“What is your strategy for managing climate-related risk?” he said. “Longer-term strategies are going to be much more important for evaluation.”

At the same time, he said, the transition to an environmentally sustainable future in the coming decades provides an annual opportunity worth trillions of dollars for companies and financiers.

It felt as if he was speaking straight from the Accessible Clean Energy playbook. Climate change is a risk – but presents a huge opportunity. A shift of this magnitude, changing the entire basis of our economies from fossil fuels to clean energy, has a double effect of helping the planet while building long term growth and value.

Being the Bank of England’s governor in these turbulent days after Brexit has got to be an interesting role. One of the biggest arguments in favour of the UK remaining part of the EU was to meet its climate change and carbon reduction commitments as part of the larger EU bloc. It will find it much harder to do this on its own, as climate change by definition is a multilateral problem that needs a multilateral solution.

There are signs, though, that the new British Prime Minister, Theresa May, has been listening to Mr. Carney’s conflation of climate change and economic wisdom. One of her first actions as PM was to abolish the Department of Energy and Climate Change, one of the flagship policies of the Brown premiership and one of the first governments in the world to have a department with “climate change” in the title.

However, Mrs. May has done something interesting – she has folded both energy and climate change responsibilities into a new expanded department of business headed by Greg Clark. This feels like a step towards Mr. Carney’s vision of climate change being something that needs to be addressed as part of the way we all do business, rather than something that is purely related to the environment, NGOs or voluntary groups.

We at Accessible Clean Energy will be watching closely to see if Mr Clark uses his new-found powers in government to put his clean energy business ideas into practice. He’ll certainly find agreement at the Bank of England.

Portugal just took a huge step forward in the renewable energy arena. The country ran on solar, wind and hydropower energy for 107-hours straight from 6:45 a.m. May 7 to 5:45 p.m. May 11, The Guardian reported.

This was a landmark event for Europe and renewable energy. In that four-day period, the European country didn’t have to turn to coal or fossil fuels for its electricity needs.

Portugal has been moving away from fossil fuels in recent years. In 2013, 70 percent of the country’s energy came from renewable resources and 24.6 percent of that was from wind power. Only Denmark produced more energy from wind power than Portugal.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation]]>accessiblecleanenergyScreen Shot 2016-05-18 at 16.00.10Green Hydrogen Gaining Momentumhttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/green-hydrogen-gaining-momentum/
Thu, 28 Apr 2016 21:08:09 +0000http://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/?p=1615]]>Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Green Hydrogen, Hypersolar]]>accessiblecleanenergyThermovoltaic Cells Harvest Heat in the Dark and Turn it into Electricityhttps://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/thermovoltaic-cells-harvest-heat-in-the-dark-and-turn-it-into-electricity/
Thu, 28 Apr 2016 20:59:31 +0000http://accessiblecleanenergy.wordpress.com/?p=1612Read More ›]]>PV can only convert a small portion of the energy spectrum of sunlight to electricity. But physicists have discovered radical new properties in a nanomaterial, opening new possibilities for highly efficient thermophotovoltaic cells that could harvest heat in the dark and turn it into electricity.

The research team from Australia National University CUDOS and the University of California Berkeley demonstrated a new artificial material, or metamaterial, that glows in an unusual way when heated.

The findings could drive a revolution in the development of cells which convert radiated heat into electricity, known as thermophotovoltaic cells.

“Thermophotovoltaic cells have the potential to be much more efficient than solar cells,” said Dr Sergey Kruk from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

“Our metamaterial overcomes several obstacles and could help to unlock the potential of thermophotovoltaic cells.”

Thermophotovoltaic cells have been predicted to be more than twice as efficient as conventional solar cells. They do not need direct sunlight to generate electricity, and instead can harvest heat from their surroundings in the form of infrared radiation.

They can also be combined with a burner to produce on-demand power or can recycle heat radiated by hot engines.

The team’s metamaterial, made of tiny nanoscopic structures of gold and magnesium fluoride, radiates heat in specific directions.

The geometry of the metamaterial can also be tweaked to give off radiation in specific spectral range, in contrast to standard materials that emit their heat in all directions as a broad range of infrared wavelengths. This makes the new material ideal for use as an emitter paired with a thermophotovoltaic cell.

The project started when Dr Kruk predicted the new metamaterial would have these surprising properties. The ANU team then worked with scientists at the University of California Berkeley, who have unique expertise in manufacturing such materials.

“To fabricate this material the Berkeley team were operating at the cutting edge of technological possibilities,” Dr Kruk said.

“The size of an individual building block of the metamaterial is so small that we could fit more than 12,000 of them on the cross-section of a human hair.”

The prototype system consisting of a solar panel and 12V LED lamp wired to a battery pack containing three Samsung Galaxy Note 2 batteries. Credit: Diouf/Kyung Hee University

Despite their hefty price tag, smartphones have an average consumer lifetime of about three years. The lithium ion batteries that power them, however, can last for about five years—meaning that just about every discarded smartphone generates e-waste and squanders the battery’s twilight years. To cut down on the environmental waste and provide storage for rural communities, researchers at Kyung Hee University in Seoul have proposed a model for recycling unspent lithium ion batteries into energy storage units for solar-powered LED lamps.